Gov. Jennifer Granholm's "Cool Cities" initiative has not done
much to help the working middle class. Joel Kotin, a professor at Chapman University, sheds light on what is
happening in American cities in an article appearing in "The American" titled
"Urban Plight: Vanishing Upward Mobility." Mr. Kotin points to a Brookings
Institution study that found that New
York City and Los Angeles have the smallest share of
middle-income neighborhoods of all American cities. The Brookings
Institution found that in 2007, Manhattan ranked
first in social inequality, with the top 20 percent earning over 50 times more than the bottom 20 percent, a gap similar to Namibia's.

In Michigan, Gov. Granholm has stuck with the playbook
of urban planners and the political left in attempting to attract the "creative
class" with grants and "green policies" aimed at luring young urbanites into cities
like Detroit, Flint
and Grand Rapids.
The result: Michigan
still has an unemployment rate north of 13 percent and so much abandoned land in Detroit and Flint
that urban farming is being touted as the next big thing.

"Cool Cities" policies discriminate against middle class
jobs because those jobs often build things and use energy and emit pollution —
things that are not considered environmentally correct by the political ruling
class.

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As voters go to the polls in November, especially those
without a job or who are underemployed, they should hold politicians
accountable who promote policies that favor one class of Americans over
another. Often, candidates who proclaim the loudest that they are for the
little guy are guilty of pursing elitist policies.

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